No more slacking on mobile collaboration security

Collaboration tools provide enterprise project team members with a dynamic digital environment for brainstorming and communicating. Combined with mobile devices, collaboration platforms offer unparalleled flexibility for enterprise team members to contribute on the road, at home, or anywhere else.

But collaboration platforms aren’t necessarily safe spaces. They’re potentially as vulnerable as any networked environment these days, particularly when it comes to the many vulnerabilities inherent in the use of mobile devices by fallible and sometimes negligent humans, otherwise known as your employees.

That could be why Slack recently announced that it is integrating security features from 21 enterprise mobility management (EMM) vendors into its Enterprise Grid product. Slack’s cloud-based set of tools and services is used by 5 million users daily and more than 90,000 enterprises, from tiny start-ups to publicly traded companies such as Capital One, though Enterprise Grid (launched in January) is geared toward enterprises with at least 500 employees.

“As more work moves to mobile, admins need a way to provide people in their company with the tools and devices they want to use — without compromising security or policy requirements,” Slack explains. “This is especially important at large enterprises where admins may have to manage how thousands of employees — and their devices — access sensitive data.”

Enterprise Grid admins can integrate Slack with any of the 21 EMM providers — including Airwatch, Blackberry, MobileIron, and VMware — to ensure that only approved devices can sign in to the organization’s Slack platform. “This enables admins to centrally manage corporate policies and approved devices in your EMM provider of choice, then automatically apply those permissions to Slack,” the company said.

Once an Enterprise Grid customer goes live with its EMM, mobile users are notified that they have 72 hours to switch to the Slack for EMM app or they’ll be locked out. (We all know how smoothly that should go!)

Team members who finally get around to having Slack for EMM installed can use single sign-on to gain access to their projects. These members still can use the regular Slack app, just not for the Enterprise Grid instances that requires EMM (no matter how many times they ask you).

Does your enterprise use Slack’s Enterprise Grid? And if so, do you think Slack for EMM will ease your security and admin burdens?